Early years '', c. 1509,
National Gallery, London The exact date of Titian's birth is uncertain. When he was an old man he claimed in a letter to
Philip II of Spain to have been born in 1474, but this seems most unlikely. Other writers contemporary to his old age give figures that would equate to birth dates between 1473 and after 1482. Although his age at death being 99 was still accepted into the 20th century, most modern scholars believe a birth date between 1488 and 1490 is likeliest. He was the son of Gregorio Vecellio and his wife Lucia, of whom little is known. The Vecellio family was well established in the area, which was ruled by Venice. Titian's grandfather Conte Vecellio was a prominent
notary who held a number of offices in the local administration. Three of Conte's sons were notaries, not including Gregorio, who was active as a soldier and closely associated with the
Venetian Arsenal, but worked mainly as a timber merchant and also managed mines in the mountainous
Cadore region for their owners. The Vecellio family of Cadore are descended from the
Lombard Da Camino family through their common ancestor Vecile da Camino. The Da Camino most likely descend from the
Collalto family.
Ludovico Dolce, who knew Titian, says that Titian had four masters, the first being Sebastiano Zuccato, the second
Gentile Bellini, then his brother
Giovanni Bellini, and last, Giorgione. No documentation for these relationships has been found. The Zucatti family of artists are best known as mosaicists, but there is no evidence that the painter Sebastiano Zuccato himself was active as a mosaicist, although Joannides says he probably was. According to
Giorgio Vasari, who also knew Titian and included a not always accurate biography of the artist in his
Lives, Titian first studied under Giovanni Bellini. Dolce writes that the boy was sent to Venice at age nine, along with his brother Francesco, to live with an uncle and apprentice to Sebastiano Zuccato. Leaving Zuccato, Titian briefly transferred to the studio of
Gentile Bellini, one of the largest and most productive workshops in Venice. Following Gentile's death in 1507 he entered into an apprenticeship with Gentile's younger brother Giovanni, acknowledged by contemporaries as the preeminent Venetian painter of the day. As there is no documentation of Titian's work before 1510, there is no way to know which version, Dolce's or Vasari's, is closer to the truth. Living in the city, Titian found a group of young men about his own age, among them Giovanni Palma da Serinalta,
Lorenzo Lotto,
Sebastiano Luciani, and Giorgio da Castelfranco, nicknamed
Giorgione.
Francesco Vecellio, Titian's brother, while more workmanlike in his approach to painting and lacking Titian's talent, was able to achieve some notice in his home town of Cadore and the
Bellunese area around it. Giorgio Martinioni mentions in his edition (1663) of
Sansovino's guide to Venice a fresco of
Hercules painted by Titian above the entrance to the Morosini house, a painting that would have been one of his earliest works, although a year later
Marco Boschini rejected this attribution. Others attributed to his early years were the Bellini-esque so-called
Gypsy Madonna in Vienna, and
The Visitation from the monastery of Sant'Andrea, now in the
Accademia, Venice. According to Joannides, features of the
Visitation's execution such as the painter's deployment of light to stress the two pregnant women and the focus on colouristic values are qualities to be found in the earliest of Titian's works, and its attribution to him is supported as well by its dramatic expression of movement and the geometry of the arrangement of visual elements on the canvas.
A Man with a Quilted Sleeve is an early portrait, painted around 1509 and described by Giorgio Vasari in 1568. Scholars long believed it depicted
Ludovico Ariosto, but now think it is of Gerolamo Barbarigo. Rembrandt had seen
A Man with a Quilted Sleeve at auction, and drew a thumbnail sketch of it. Later he was able to examine the painting more closely in the home of the Sicilian merchant Ruffio, who had bought it. The work inspired the Dutch artist to sketch his own self-portrait in 1639 and then to make a similar etching, followed by a self-portrait in oils in 1640. In 1507–1508, Giorgione was commissioned by the state to create exterior frescoes on the recently rebuilt
Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a warehouse for the German merchants in the city, which stood next to the
Rialto bridge facing the
Grand Canal. Titian and
Morto da Feltre worked on the project—Giorgione painted the facade facing the canal in 1508, while Titian painted the facade above the street, probably in 1509. Many contemporary critics found Titian's work more impressive. Only some badly damaged fragments of the paintings remain. Some of their work is known, in part, through the engravings of
Fontana. The relationship between the two young artists evidently contained a significant element of rivalry. Distinguishing between their works during this period remains a subject of scholarly controversy. A substantial number of attributions have moved from Giorgione to Titian in the 20th century, with little traffic the other way. One of the earliest known Titian works,
Christ Carrying the Cross in the
Scuola Grande di San Rocco, was long regarded as being by Giorgione. ,'' 1514,
Galleria Borghese, Rome After Giorgione's early death in 1510, Titian continued to paint Giorgionesque subjects for some time, though his style developed its own features, including the bold and expressive brushwork so characteristic of his later years. '') Titian's talent in fresco is shown in those he painted in 1511 at
Padua in the
Carmelite church and in the
Scuola del Santo, some of which have been preserved, among them the
Meeting at the Golden Gate, and three scenes (''Miracoli di sant'Antonio
) from the life of St. Anthony of Padua, Murder of a Young Woman by Her Husband
, which depicts The Miracle of the Jealous Husband, A Child Testifying to Its Mother's Innocence
, and The Saint Healing the Young Man with a Broken Limb
. The Resurrected Christ'' (Uffizi) also dates to 1511-1512. On 31 May 1513 Titian petitioned the Council of Ten for a commission to paint a canvas depicting a great battle scene (it was completed only in 1538) for the Doge's palace. and whose symbolic value was usually greater than the income itself. The Council, who already knew his reputation, were receptive to his offer. The request was granted, but it was reversed in March 1514. His application was recorded again in November 1514, with the understanding that he had an expectation of Giovanni Bellini's position unless another became vacant in the meantime. Titian did not obtain the
sansaria upon Bellini's death in late 1516, however. Apparently the Senate wanted to keep his services in reserve until he proved himself, and the appointment was withheld until 1523. The
sansaria was important for Titian with its implicit recognition as quasi-official painter to the republic and represented an opportunity to gain major commissions from the state. Once he obtained it, he transformed it over time into a sinecure which required little work, although it was intended as payment for the performance of certain tasks in the Doge's Palace. For sixty years he was the undisputed master of Venetian painting. '', 1516–1518; it took Titian more than two years to complete this painting in the
Frari church in Venice In 1516, he completed his masterpiece, the
Assumption of the Virgin, for the high altar of the Basilica di
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. It is still
in situ, and is his largest single panel. In the pictorial structure of the
Assumption, the three domains of the composition are occupied by the apostles on earth, the Madonna rising in the sky, and God the Father in heaven looking over all. These are united to form a coherent whole, unlike the less dynamic and more fragmented renditions of earlier painters. According to Bruce Cole, Titian studied traditional renderings of the
Assumption like every artist of the Renaissance. He would have been familiar with
Andrea Mantegna's large fresco of the subject executed in Padua's
church of the Eremitani in the 1450s, having worked in 1510 on frescoes for the
Scuola del Santo in Padua. Nearby Venice on the lagoon isle of
Murano there was another example of the subject, painted by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop, that Titian would have known. Although he surely held these previous works in high esteem, his approach to composing his own
Assunta was individualistic and innovative. The commission for the
Assumption, undertaken in 1515, was soon followed by commissions for major altarpieces at Brescia and Ancona, as well as for the altar of the Pesaro family chapel in the Frari. By 1520 he must have been working on several of these works at once, including the second version of the
San Nicolò altarpiece now displayed in the
Vatican Pinacoteca.
St Sebastian, painted on a separate panel of a polyptych, was commissioned by a papal legate to Venice,
Altobello Averoldi, for the altarpiece of the Church of Santi Nazzaro e Celso in Brescia. Signed and dated 1522, according to
David Rosand it was ready for viewing in 1520. Jacopo Tebaldi, an agent for
Alfonso I d'Este, was present for the studio preview, and schemed to purchase it for the duke. Saint Sebastian, bound and wounded, had special status as an intercessor during periodic outbreaks of the
plague, and was a very popular subject of sacred painting. Such a figure, intended for a religious context, nonetheless provided an occasion for portrayal of the male nude and could be appreciated as an independent work of art. Bette Talvacchia alludes to Luba Freedman's discussion of the figure of Sebastian in terms of its reception by a contemporary "learned audience", acquainted with the literature of art, who could be said to have had some claim to connoiseurship. '', ,
Louvre. To this period belongs a more extraordinary work,
The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (1530), formerly in the Dominican Church of
San Zanipolo, and destroyed by a fire in 1867. Only copies and
engravings of this proto-
Baroque picture remain. It combined extreme violence and a landscape, mostly consisting of a great tree, that pressed into the scene and seems to accentuate the drama in a way that presages the Baroque. The artist simultaneously continued a series of small
Madonnas, which he placed amid beautiful landscapes, in the manner of genre pictures or poetic pastorals. The
Virgin with the Rabbit, in the
Louvre, is the finished type of these pictures. Another work of the same period, also in the Louvre, is the
Entombment. This was also the period of the three large and famous mythological scenes for the
camerino of
Alfonso d'Este in
Ferrara,
The Bacchanal of the Andrians and the
Worship of Venus in the and the
Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23) in
London, "perhaps the most brilliant productions of the neo-pagan culture or 'Alexandrianism' of the
Renaissance, many times imitated but never surpassed even by
Rubens himself." including some of Venice's famous
courtesans. In Syson's view, if this practice was generally known in 16th-century Venetian society, it might have influenced the "reactions and interpretations" by some of the paintings' owners and those who viewed them. depicts
Ariadne, a Cretan princess abandoned by
Theseus, whose ship is shown in the distance and who has just left her at the Greek island of
Naxos, at the moment when
Bacchus arrives. Bacchus, falling immediately in love with Ariadne, leaps from his chariot, drawn by two cheetahs, to be near her. In the mythical love story, Ariadne is frightened by the wine god's raucous retinue and runs away. Bacchus wins her over and they are married, following which he creates from her jewelled wedding crown the constellation of the
Corona Borealis, whose stars Titian places in the upper left of the sky to symbolize their eternal love. The painting belongs to a series commissioned from Bellini, Titian, and
Dosso Dossi, for the
Camerino d'Alabastro (Alabaster Room) in the Ducal Palace,
Ferrara, by
Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, who in 1510 tried to commission Michelangelo and
Raphael for the series. In early 1508, Titian's father Gregorio had fought with the victorious forces of
Bartolomeo d'Alviano at
Valle against the armies of
Maximilian I. In 1513, Titian applied to the
Council of Ten of the
Republic of Venice, offering to paint a battle scene in the
Sala del Consiglio Maggiore (Hall of the Great Council) of the Ducal Palace. The battle painting, which came to be known as
Battle of Cadore, was commissioned in 1513 and documents in the palace archives record that Titian went to work on it immediately, but eventually his enthusiasm for the project diminished and by June 1537, it remained unfinished. A document dated 23 June 1537 records that he had been granted a broker's patent in 1513, contingent on his painting the canvas of the battle scene, and since 5 December 1516 he had been paid the revenues of that appointment. Because he had not fulfilled its terms the council demanded he return all the funds he had received for those years in which he had done no work. According to
Harold Wethey, the oil-on-canvas painting finally completed by Titian in 1538 covered the deteriorated fresco,
Battle of Spoleto, executed by
Guariento di Arpo in the 14th century. Contemporary or near contemporary sources pertaining to the canvas are contradictory and do not clarify exactly when it was painted or which particular battle it represented. Sansovino says Titian omitted the inscription Guariento had placed above the former painting of the battle of Spoleto. It was Titian's most important attempt at a tumultuous and heroic scene of movement to rival
Raphael's
The Battle of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, Michelangelo's equally ill-fated
Battle of Cascina, and
Leonardo da Vinci's
The Battle of Anghiari (these last two unfinished). Gillet mentions a "poor, incomplete copy at the
Uffizi, and a mediocre engraving by Fontana." It is generally believed to have been finished in 1530–1535. Alfonso d'Avalos wrote a letter in November 1531 to
Pietro Aretino, in which he stated that he wished to be portrayed by Titian with his wife and son. Although the letter does not prove that the artist undertook such a commission, the painting subsequently was regarded as a portrait of the military figure. The earliest identification of the painting's protagonist as the warrior d'Avalos is in an inventory of artworks belonging to the English
King Charles I, completed in 1639 by
Abraham van der Doort, Keeper of Charles I's art collections. As noted by Paul Johannides, van der Doort's reference can be interpreted as 'owned by' rather than as 'representing', suggesting that Alfonso might have been the commissioner of the painting rather than its male subject. Walter Friedlaender calls Titian's three paintings on the ceiling of
Santa Maria della Salute "manifestations of genius unprecedented even in Titian's own work", as expressed in the impassioned power of movement in the composition and in his "daring" use of
contrapposti and foreshortening. These represent
Cain and Abel, the
Sacrifice of Isaac, and
David and Goliath. Friedlaender says these paintings, finished in 1544, were greatly influential in the development of Baroque painting, and admired because of his success in projecting powerful movement in the spaces overhead without using a complicated system of perspective. Further, this new mode introduced in the Salute paintings was an important influence on Veronese's decorations in San Sebastiano and on Rubens in his later decorations for the Church of San Carlo Borromeo in Antwerp. At this time also, during his visit to
Rome, the artist began a series of reclining Venuses:
The Venus of Urbino of the Uffizi,
Venus and Love at the same museum, and
Venus—and the Organ-Player, Madrid, which shows the influence of contact with ancient sculpture.
Giorgione had already dealt with the subject in his Dresden picture, finished by Titian. the first in a series representing Danaë and the golden shower. painted for Cardinal Farnese, one of several variants by Titian: Cupid alongside Danaë (1544). Oil on canvas, 120 × 172 cm (47.2 x 67.7 in). National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples The Farnese
Danaë (1544–1546) is a masterful demonstration of Titian's painterly use of colour, imbuing the painting, according to Janson, with "unrivaled richness and complexity of colour". Janson contrasts Titian's embrace of the sensual and emotional appeal of
colore with Michelangelo's more intellectual emphasis on
disegno, or design, as seen in the detailed drawings of figures made in preparation for his painted compositions.
Danaë was one of several mythological paintings, or "poesie" ("poems"), as the painter called them. This painting was done for Cardinal Farnese, but a later variant was produced for
Philip II for whom Titian painted many of his most important mythological paintings. Although
Michelangelo adjudged this piece deficient from his point of view regarding the importance of preliminary drawings for a composition, These qualities show in the
Portrait of Pope Paul III, the
Portrait of Pietro Aretino, the
Portrait of Isabella of Portugal, and the series of Emperor
Charles V, especially the
Equestrian Portrait of Charles V (1548), commissioned by the emperor to commemorate his defeat of the
Schmalkaldic League at the
Battle of Mühlberg. It shows Charles in his battle armour carrying a lance, suggesting the appurtenances of a Roman emperor going on campaign. According to Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, depicting Charles in contemporary armour with a lance also suggests that in the context of Mühlberg, Charles is appearing in his role as a Christian knight. In 1533, after painting a portrait of the Emperor Charles V in Bologna, Titian was made a Count Palatine and
Knight of the Golden Spur. According to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, his children were also made nobles of the
Empire. , (Berlin) dated variously from the mid-1540s to the early 1550s His appointment as
court painter to Charles V allowed Titian to gain royal patronage and work on prestigious commissions. Considering the profoundly conservative disposition of Venetian society and politics, painters in Titian's time were relegated to the craftsmen guild of the
Arte dei Depentori. Although active in the local affairs of the guild, Titian was far from feeling confined by the medieval corporate system of the guilds with their duties and political strictures, and enjoyed the freedom afforded by his continued residence in the Most Serene Republic. Having been court painter of Charles V since 1533, he also took commissions from the pope, and executed works for the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino. The duties imposed on him by the imperial court in exchange for his annual pensions were comparatively light. He crossed the Alps twice to join the emperor in Germany and made a few trips to Asti, Bologna, and Milan, but otherwise his presence at court was not required, allowing him to avoid the degrading obligations of most courtiers. In the first decades of the 16th century, sophisticated patrons of art such as
Isabella d'Este had begun to seek works for their collections beyond the conventional portraits, civic images, and altarpieces, and to acquire paintings by certain artists, whose productions were avidly sought by collectors. Consequently, extraordinarily talented artists including Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian rose in social status far above that traditionally accorded painters, who previously had been regarded as tradesmen, and acquired wealth of their own. As recounted by Sophie Bostock, Titian was appointed "First Painter to the Most Serene Republic of Venice" upon the death of Giovanni Bellini, and his fame throughout Europe increased accordingly. Titian, like Gentile Bellini, was one of the first artists to be granted noble status by a monarch—only the work and person of Michelangelo were held in such high esteem. In a self-portrait from the 1550s, he depicts himself clothed in the rich attire of a patrician, including the heavy gold chain bestowed on him by Charles V in 1533. In 1540 he received a pension of 50 ducats from Alfonso d'Avalos, marquis del Vasto. Art historian Carlo Corsato conducted research to reconstruct the sequence of events concerning Titian's pensions, and the context in which they occurred: On 15 August 1541, Charles V awarded Titian an annual stipend of 100
scudi payable at a bank in Milan. Early in 1548, Charles and Titian met at the
Diet of Augsburg. During his sojourn there, Titian solidified his position as official court painter by completing six paintings, among them the
Equestrian Portrait of Charles V. The meeting also afforded Titian a chance to make the emperor aware that he had not received a single payment of the stipend. On 10 July 1548 Charles V granted him a second annual pension of 100 scudi, in addition to the stipend granted in 1541.
Philip II signed a royal deed on 5 July 1571 reaffirming his father's earlier concession of a stipend of 200 scudi annually to Titian. He also bestowed on the artist the right to transfer the privilege to his son Orazio following his death. Titian was adept in managing his affairs: he invested in real estate and lent money at interest. Like other merchants, he dealt in lumber and grain, one source of profit was a contract he obtained in 1542 for supplying grain to Cadore when local stores were low. Titian had a villa on the Manza Hill in front of the church (Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo) of
Castello Roganzuolo, where he painted a
triptych. The so-called Titian's mill, frequently discernible in his studies, is at Collontola, near Belluno. Titian visited Rome in 1545–1546 and was honoured with the
freedom of the city. He was offered the office of
piombotore or keeper of the
papal seal three times, the first when he became the Farneses' chosen portraitist, and presumably the last time when
Sebastiano del Piombo's death left the position unoccupied, but he politely refused the lucrative sinecure. He was summoned to Augsburg from Venice in 1547 to paint portraits of Charles V and of other dignitaries. Titian took advantage of the opportunity to present himself as more than a portrait painter and one whose versatility as an artist could be of value to the emperor. Consequently he began to produce variants and replicas of his works in a systematic almost assembly-line fashion, an unprecedented practice. In his studio Titian used "specialised collaborators" who made copies of his works, which he then retouched for corrections and to impart his
esprit to paintings that might be sold as originals, or to purchasers who were not necessarily averse to settling for copies. In Titian's time retouching was practiced widely by artists, especially to perfect the work done by apprentices in their workshops. When laying-in the background of a composition, the master and his workshop team typically laid in more than one iteration, which might be obliterated by others, as often happened, or revised and reworked later, even 40 or 50 years later. Titian treated his underdrawings as mere suggestions, and frequently made changes to the original drawing which might not be followed in the painting's execution.
Poesie series For Philip II, he painted a series of large mythological paintings known as the "Poesie", inspired mostly by
Ovid's mythological narrative texts, which scholars regard as among his greatest works. Thanks to the prudishness of Philip's successors, these were later mostly given as gifts, and only two remain in the Prado. Titian was producing religious works for Philip at the same time, some of which—the ones inside
Ribeira Palace—are known to have been destroyed during the
1755 Lisbon Earthquake. The "poesie" series contained the following works: •
Danaë, sent to Philip in 1553, now in the
Wellington Collection, with earlier and later versions •
Venus and Adonis, of which the earliest surviving version, delivered in 1554, is in the Prado, but several versions exist •
Perseus and Andromeda (
Wallace Collection, now damaged) •
Diana and Actaeon, owned jointly by the
National Gallery in London and the
National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh •
Diana and Callisto, were dispatched in 1559, owned jointly by the National Gallery and the National Gallery of Scotland •
The Rape of Europa (Boston,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), delivered in 1562 •
The Death of Actaeon, now in the National Gallery in London, begun in 1559 but worked on for many years and never completed or delivered In 1623, when
Prince Charles of England was to be married to Infanta
Maria Anna of Spain, "[h]er enormous dowry was to be partially paid in pictures. Prince Charles had asked for all of Titian's
Poesie". When Charles cancelled the wedding, "Titian's
Poesie, not yet shipped, were taken out of their crates and hung back up on the walls of the Spanish royal palace". The
Poesie, except for
The Death of Actaeon, were brought together for the first time in nearly 500 years in an exhibition in 2020 and 2021 that travelled from the
National Gallery in London, to the in Madrid, to the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where it closed on January 2, 2022. c. 1560–1562,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum According to the art historian
Louis Gillet:
Legacy Titian married off his daughter Lavinia in 1555 with a noble dowry of 1,400 ducats to Cornelio Sarcinelli, a member of the local nobility of
Serravale, a town on the road between Venice and Pieve di Cadore. Lavinia bore five children whose names are known, two of them daughters, and there is some evidence she had another, older girl. The fact that Cornelio provided a dowry of 1,200 ducats for their daughter Helena gives some idea of his wealth. Titian continued to accept commissions to the end of his life. Augusto Gentili writes that from the mid-1540s on, his work was mostly outside Venice, with obligations to Italian and European patrons elsewhere. Aside from his imperial and Spanish commissions, there was comparatively little demand for his works in Venice and he lost influence there during his long absences. Few of his works from that period remain in the city. Nevertheless, the volume of Titian's artistic work remained undiminished even when he was in his late eighties—the workshop was still carrying on at its usual pace, and could well have continued to produce paintings under his name if Orazio had outlived his father. Titian planned for his legacy by introducing Orazio to his patrons and trying to win their favor on his behalf. , c. 1576, his last painting.
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice. His final painting, the
Pietà
, is an image of tragic pathos that evokes feelings of pity and sorrow in the presence of death. It is a highly personalized composition, wherein Titian, portrayed as Saint Jerome, prostrates himself before the Virgin and reaches out to the lifeless body of Christ. Statues of Moses with the Ten Commandments and the
Hellespontine Sibyl, who prophesied Christ's death and resurrection, flank the stone piers of a niche with a
semi-dome apse and a mosaic ceiling that depicts a pelican piercing its breast to feed its young (a symbol of the resurrection), the whole surmounted by a pediment topped with burning lamps. The canvas, composed of seven pieces of canvas stitched together and measuring x , is one of the largest ever painted by Titian. Because the Pietà was to decorate the artist's own tomb, it is often interpreted as an invocation or “painted prayer” for protection from the plague that eventually killed him. Titian's estate was in disarray soon after his death. Orazio died only weeks afterwards, leading to a five-year dispute between Titian's other son Pomponio and his son-in-law Cornelio Sarcinelli over the estate, including the contents of the workshop and paintings in the house. Nygren says he retouched only parts of the picture, including the
putto in the lower left, the putto at its center, and some elements of the architecture, mainly along the upper edge. Another violent masterpiece is
Tarquin and Lucretia.
Death , Venice While the
plague raged in Venice, Titian died on 27 August 1576. Given the modern scholarly consensus that he was born between 1488 and 1490, he would have been at least eighty-six years old, and no more than ninety. According to Nichols, the Franciscan friars of the Frari felt that the painting did not respect the 'ancient devotions' to the medieval crucifix in the Chapel of Christ, and had returned it to him. Very shortly after Titian's death, his son, assistant and sole heir
Orazio, also died of the plague, greatly complicating the settlement of his estate, as he had made no will. The painting apparently remained in his studio and eventually the painter
Jacopo Palma il Giovane, who claimed to have been a pupil in his workshop, came into its possession and added a few small touches. After Palma's death in 1628, the church of Sant'Angelo acquired the canvas in 1631, where it remained until the church was destroyed in the early 18th century. The Pietà became part of the collection of the Accademia Galleries in 1814. Luigi Zandomeneghi, a student of
Antonio Canova, and director of the Accademia when the commission was made, was selected to create the monument. It was built of the finest
Carrara marble across the nave from Titian's own
Ca' Pesaro Madonna. Zandomeneghi's sons, Pietro and Andrea, completed the project after he died. ==Family and workshop==